Mona On Pretty Little Liars

Mona On Pretty Little Liars, The wait is over: The identity of the elusive “A” was revealed on Monday’s new episode of ABC Family’s addictive teen mystery-drama Pretty Little Liars. The fast-paced episode careened through a Psycho homage and a masquerade ball before — SPOILER ALERT! — dropping the bombshell that variously snobby clinger Mona Vanderwall (Janel Parrish) was “A,” the cyber-bully who’d been terrorizing Aria (Lucy Hale), Spencer (Troian Bellisario), Hanna (Ashley Benson), and Emily (Shay Mitchell) since the death of their pal Allison (Sasha Pieterse) in the show’s 2010 premiere.

The reveal, of course, leads to so many questions: Why Mona? What was her motive? Did she have help? Is there a “Team A” now? Will Mona be back when Pretty Little Liars returns for season 3 in June? What’s happening next season? And we should address the other shocker of last night’s episode: Why kill Maya? To answer those burning questions and more, EW tapped series creator Marlene King and executive producer Oliver Goldstick for an exclusive interview to fill us in on all the scoop:

+ Mona? Really?! Yes, really. King says that Mona was the “most logical and also the most satisfying” choice for “A” because she had motive. “There were other people along the way who could have been ‘A’ — and they’re liars and they’re cheats — but Mona was completely abused by Allison and bullied by Allison,” King explains. “The Pretty Little Liars let her do it, and we see that in the pilot, in the very first scene, where she’s running after Allison and Aria and they just don’t even pay attention to her. ‘If you ignore it, it will go away’ — that’s what Allison says. And from that moment, ‘A’ was born.” As for Mona also being “A” in the book series, Goldstick adds: “We felt like we had a certain need to honor the thing that was set up by the author.”

+ What was Mona’s motive? “The motive for Mona really kicked into gear when Aria came back from Europe because Mona had Hanna for that year and they became friends,” King says. “This fear of losing Hanna again inspired Mona to start tormenting these girls in the way that they tormented her, and then it kind of backfires. She ends up bringing them closer together than ever, so then she’s even more p—ed than ever in season 2. She really wanted to get Hanna back all to herself. Mona hates Hanna the most because the other three were Allison’s friend, but Hanna was her friend. She feels the most personally betrayed by Hanna.”

+ What key moments should fans go back and watch again? There are many, but King points to one in particular from last night’s finale. “In the finale, there’s a moment that I love where Spencer says to Mona — and I forget the exact wording — but it’s like, ‘I know who you are,’” King says. “Mona says, ‘Guilty.’ It was like she was completely giving it up right there. It was at the ball. There are little moments like that if you go back.”

+ When did Parrish find out she was going to be “A”? About halfway through shooting this past season — so last fall. “Janel kind of suspected it all along, and so she played her role with that in mind, but it was really about halfway through season 2 that I pulled her aside and had a conversation,” says King. “I said, ‘You are ‘A.” And so she started playing things with that knowledge in mind. We started asking more and more of her, in more complicated scenes.”